By Rhonda Nelson

What is going on today with customer service? In my opinion good customer service has become an anomaly. I am proud to admit I am one of those people who were actually in the working industry when the internet began, when Bill Gates and his Windows program took over the proverbial computer world. The time before mass automation and caller ID. When I began working in Accounting and Bookkeeping we were keeping on ledgers and lotus 123. All you gals over 40 know about Lotus 123. Mac based computer programs were huge then too.

Human beings use to be kind to one another just because it was the correct good Christian thing to do. Regardless of religion, it was Christ like just to be kind and a good person. It was 1994 and the change came, Internet first then a steady decline. I am not sure if it’s religious, political or what, but human kindness is on the rapid decrease and rapid get rich plans on the rise. It used to be a good thing to work hard and earn a fair but decent salary. Today if you’re not making over $250K, you’re poor! And apparently with wealth comes lack of manners, respect, consequence, or remorse. Shame today appears to be making less than 250K.

When you call someone that you pay your good hard earned money to for a service or product you at the least EXPECT courtesy? Well I do. However within the past 15 years, customer service representatives, generally at the behest of superiors, do not value the customer any longer because there is another customer right around the corner. Or/and the customer service representative is aware that the company does not punish or have consequence for rude behaviors or lack of someone knowing his/her job.

I have been on both sides of the coin; both an employer and an employee and I can say the one thing that is my best asset is my customer service skills. None of hit is personal and I treat sxituati9on as such, n not personal. Irregardless of how angry the customer is, yelling, screaming, name calling, I do not get upset. First they don’t know me nor me them so how can it be personal. As a customer serviced rep, manager, vice president or janitor my job is to represent the company and be knowledgeable of my position and some of the positions around me. Just in case I need to send them to another dep0artme t I will know where I am sending them rather than having a customer chase their own ass in circles of automated systems.

There was one situation in particular and I’ll leave names out due to liability issues, however this more than allegedly reputable company had been a supplier of phone service for over 50 years; however in 2009 the company I worked for was still paying under a 20 year old billing system. We were actually paying about $0.45 cents per minute for long distance in a business that gave lots of money to this well-known supplier and the supplier could not contact their customer and informed them that they have better pricing and plans, which they did, that they could save money by switching over and since the had been customers for over 50 years they would always want to maintain that kind of loyal customer by assuring the best customer service. Needless to say I switched from that company to one that had the business bundle that offered competitive rates in the 21 century.

Another situation was just the crazy’s thing, but it’s how companies get rich quick, by screwing over their customers. If you have 200 customers who purchased something and yet only 10% of them complain, those are good odds with wonderful financial benefits. And the 10 percent that did complain may not get all the money returned to them.

Bottom line is we have all made the choice to push this automated systems in the early 90′s as a way to ease our discomfort of everyday life and it’s biting us in the proverbial ass.

In my opinion we have all lost sight of our Lord Christ, our human kindness and instinctive goodness, because goodness is instinctive from birth and the rude humans I have come across in the past 20 years have learned very bad behaviors. We have chosen not to be our brother’s keepers. We no longer feel it takes a village to raise a child, hell a good deal of parents are absentee in their children’s lives. Some without child support. It’s crazy!

I for one welcome human communication, I prefer to have someone hang up on me than a machine that just sent me in circles for 30 minutes only to put me back to square one. I like the comfort of knowing a human will assist me in what I need if I’m spending money in their store or business. So to every company out there that feels they are better than other s and that they don’t need customers I am that one person that will take my business elsewhere.